THe Vengeance Factor Revisited
by Austenwoolf
Summary: Set after the episode by the same nam. Just a small glimpse.


I hope no one minds that I keep rehashing old themes, but I have a lot of older stories that no one has ever read before and unfortunately you guys are my guinea pigs; sorry about your luck. I also have an old piece about the whole Worf/Troi/Riker thing that I will be posting as soon as I can, consider this fair warning.  
  
Disclaimer: Paramount owns them and all things associated with them. Author's note: This is another story from my Archive that my muse bullied me into fixing up a little. (Does anyone else's muse wear leather and carry I riding crop or is it just mine?) This story takes place after the events of the episode The Vengeance Factor, an episode where Riker has to kill a women he was attracted to before she assassinates someone.  
  
The Vengeance Factor  
  
Yuta was dead, and he had killed her. It was not the first time duty had called for him to take the life of another, but this was not the same, this hurt a hell of a lot more painful. He had cared for the woman, pitied her lack of freedom but he knew now that her lack of freedom was self- imposed. She forged the bars of her prison with her determination for revenge, and Will could not understand it.  
  
How did the need for revenge drive someone to spend a lifetime in a futile quest for justice? Questions kept floating through his guilt-ridden mind and it all came down to why, the most often asked and all encompassing question in the cosmos. Will Riker was many things, but a philosopher he was not, and so he could find no satisfactory answer to that question.  
  
As he sat in his quarters with only the stars to illuminate the darkness, he remembered the moment of her death. He remembered each firing of his phaser, her stumble, his pleads for her to stop. His mind continued in the same circle, over and over again he saw her death, and it was slowly driving him crazy. He groaned and put his head in his hands, guilt, confusion, and anger battling over control of his mind. He was so deep in his own torment that he did not notice the door slide open or the dark haired women that walked in tentatively.  
  
Deanna approached Will slowly, not wanting to startle him. She could feel his mind bubbling with emotions so strong they stopped her in her tracks. Finally, after a moment to compose herself she stepped beside the chair he sat in. He looked up at her, his blue eyes clouded by pain, and then turned back to the view port to continue his examination of space.  
  
"You did what had to be done," she said. She wanted nothing more then to take him into her arms and soothe him but in his current mood, she was not sure how he would react.  
  
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" He asked bitterly.  
  
She stepped around the chair, knelt in front of him, and gently placed her hand on his bearded cheek. "No Imzadi it's not."  
  
Will could see tears begging to well up in her dark eyes, tears she shed for his pain it was there way she cried the tears he could not. Silently he reached for her, she slid like warm honey into his arms, and he pulled her onto his lap. They rested their foreheads together and shared their breath, while Deanna continued to silently cry his tears for him. She took all his pain into herself, not alleviating it, but sharing it, until his pain became hers and he knew he was not alone.  
  
To anyone who might have seen them at that moment it would be hard to say whom was comforting whom, Will cradled Deanna like a child in his lap while she ran her fingers in a soothing manner through his hair and down his back. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Will realized that if he was not ridden with guilt over Yuta he would have kissed her, made love to her right there, but Deanna was not here for that she was here to comfort him in a way no other women ever had.  
  
How long they stayed like that Will did not know, but eventually they both fell into a deep dreamless sleep. When Will woke hours later, he carried her to the bed and gently lay beside her. He kissed the top of her head relishing her unique flowery scent, and gathered her up in his arms. "Thank-you Imzadi," he whispered as sleep took him again. 


End file.
